I was in a toss up as to how I should start this story to best explain the magical experience of one’s first Oregon Country Fair. After all, it’s only once that you get to see this behemoth of a festival for the first time and pop your fair cherry.
It’s only right that we begin this tale lathered up in Dr. Bronner’s soap, surrounded by 150 naked hippies gyrating to electronic jazz.
I’d been hearing about this Veneta-based flower-child-fest since I first moved to Oregon in 2019, but then two summers passed with no great bohemian gathering. I began to chalk up all the OCF hype to nostalgia and I forgot all about the celebration — until my day job at the WOW Hall asked me to work the fair.
I’d been handed a Willy Wonka golden ticket that I didn’t even know existed. Not only did I get to attend all three days of this elusive madness, but I’d be there for four nights too. July 7-11 were to be my days of reckoning.
Once you arrive on site, there seems to be people happily filling every typical festival position possible. The most baffling part of all of this is that this massive dream crew is completely made up of volunteers.
Volunteers slaving away with a smile on a production that puts Outside Lands and Coachella to shame? Only in Oregon.
On day one, I was a virgin sacrifice to the 500 acre fair ground. On day two, I was shaking my bare ass with tenderhearted tree huggers. Nothing could have prepared me for this.
Over the course of three days I did things I never thought I would. I met a shamanic old man and we soul bonded without a word as we danced together in a field. I was brought to tears watching a fat man in a kilt walk a slackline while playing the harmonica. I made friends with a strawberry named Keisha.
If that doesn’t make much sense to you don’t worry, it doesn’t make much sense to me either.
I suppose the great part about the fair is nothing really has to make sense.
This place was like a giant stimulation chamber with something exciting to see with every turn of the head. Clown parades, people on stilts dressed as dragonflies, girls spewing bright green upchuck with a smile, my ADHD was absolutely loving it. As my friends and I walked up and down the never ending loops of enticements, we declared that when we die, Country Fair would be our ideal purgatory. We could ogle these great hippie wonders forever.
Though I spent most of my time aimlessly wandering, I caught some great performances too.
It’s no surprise that I went into the weekend most excited for Portland based rock band The Macks. I. Love. The Macks.
I’m a creature of habit, and a stubborn one at that, so I was swearing up and down this was the only band on the lineup I was gung-ho about seeing. Of course the five mackies crushed it, but I was wondering if the people tripping sack thought so too.I eat it up everytime frontman Sam Fulwiler puts his mic in his mouth and shrieks like a velociraptor, but to someone dosed enough, I could see how that would send them into an ego death spiral like no other.
Macks aside, I was introduced to stuff I’d probably never listen to in my free time, but went totally bananas over it in this new setting.
Queer glam folk band Glitterfox went absoltely crazy. Their lead singer Solange Igoa was a beast in terms of performance and by their closing cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon”, I was eating every word I’d ever said about folk music being for Catholics.
High Step Society brought together a fusion of vaudeville, burlesque and electro jazz that shouldn’t have worked but absolutely did. MarchFourth gave marching bands the clout they deserve in the world of funk. Color me impressed.
Beyond the spectacle of the fair, I was most floored at the organization of everything. Despite the charm of dropout culture running rampant, Oregon Country Fair is organized down to a science. You’d expect it to be Woodstock-esque in the mayhem department, but this thing was dialed in like no other festival I’d ever seen before.
Every year about a month prior to the fair, a newspaper called the Peach Pit appears all around Eugene. This rag is the holy grail of OCF where fair-goers can find literally anything they might need to know about the upcoming fest. With around 960 vendors and 25 stages at the fair, the Peach Pit is handy to say the least.
I can’t speak for every fair attendee, but I had just about the most wild first fair a girl could dream of. My fingernails are still filthy and my feet still stink, but losing my fair virginity was surely a long strange trip that I wish I could do all over again.
